You
by unbearablelightness
Summary: Nick's thoughts.
1. Chapter 1

_I want you, you you_

- You by Tom Waits

The issue was that he loved her.  
It had taken him a while to realize it: to really understand that this draw he felt to her, this inexorable feeling where he wanted to talk with her, listen to her, be around her, see her, touch her, was him in love. He was so intrigued by such a large part of her, so fascinated by her, so comfortable, that it had become an issue. It wouldn't stay small inside of him. He didnt't feel like it could be reduced anymore, hidden in him.

He had been drawn to her from the beginning. Her kindness wrapped around him and encouraged him like he hadn't felt in his adult life. He felt polished, renewed, uncovered by her. So he'd co-created and put his signature on the No Nail Clause. In his defense, the clause had initially held weight. Nick, Schmidt, Coach, and Winston all knew Jess was physically attractive, and a contract to withold sex seemed like enough at the time. As the year and a half of living together wore on, Jess wore Nick down. She reduced his whole slew of unfelt feelings and confused emotions to one single, solitary idea, and that was that he was in love with her. Whatever love was meant to be articulated as, Nick felt it.

And so now it was like a wound that had the scab ripped off. It was right there, obvious, and he couldn't stand it. He hugged her, truly wanting nothing more than to quell the feeling of absurdity in his head. He felt like an idiot, an absolutely transparent fool who couldn't swallow words that he'd let out. He'd kissed her and meant it, and tip-toeing around the fact that it even meant _anything _killed him. Because it meant a lot.

No, a single kiss didn't contain some key to everything that he felt. It wasn't some all-telling event that shifted the balance of the universe so that they could fall into an easy transition to roommates to soulmates. So the issue wasn't that he regretted kissing her or touching her knee or sitting outside of his doorway while Russel's daughter tried on bras or chosing not to move in with Caroline. All of these things could be, and were, silenced. They happened, a palpable connection linking them together, and then they were let go. The issue here was that he was a human being, he was in love with Jess, and he wanted to tell her.

Watching her struggle to understand him and to configure the collection of their relationship in her mind, to make sense of how she felt, was tolling. That it wasn't as simple shrugging against their confused, jumbled conversations of their feelings and saying "Listen Jess, all of this boils down to me being in love with you and wanting you to know."


	2. Chapter 2

You  
(contains future-episode spoilers)  
  
Struggle ceased. It was a Tuesday evening. Nick was working more than usual lately, his new boss encouraging long dialogues between the two of them, brainstorming marketing ideas. Nick felt challenged, finally, and a little excited. He was also absent. Less time at home and less time hanging out with Jess. Nick was banking on his slow absence to shift the strangeness between them back to a more comfortable place.

So this Tuesday night. It was more than a month after he and Jess had kissed and less than a week since he and his boss's college-age daughter Shane had kissed. Shane was deep into a masters degree, sharp, fun, distracting. He felt relatively hollow toward her, but that was encouraged by her when she leaned in to kiss him in the dry stock room. It felt very blank.

This Tuesday night was when Schmidt and Jess were at the bar, sharing martinis and mapping out their proposed pilots for a new reality show. They were in a booth, away from the bar. If Nick looked up at the booth, Jess's eyes darted away. She was facing the bar, a clear view of him. Such a clear view allowed her an uninterrupted viewing of Shane curling up behind Nick, kissing her palm, and pressing it to his cheek.

Nick hadn't known Jess had seen this, but before Shane's could even remove her hand from his cheek, Jess was limping to the door. Nick watched her leave; she seemed stiff, her shoulders tensed and her arms barely moving as she hobbled out the door.

Schmidt was at the bar suddenly, sighing. "Not even casting Celebrity Guilty Pleasures could distract her from that." Schmidt traced patterns in the condensation on the bar. "Sister got whiplash standing up so fast. Go on, Nick. Repair that."

* * *

Nick took his time. He didn't run back to the apartment, apologies pouring from his mouth. He felt like he was expected to mend a situation where he held no weight.

Jess was sitting cross-legged on the couch, her laptop on her lap. The blue glow from the screen on her face showed her expression: entirely neutral, slightly gap-mouthed. The look of someone on the internet. Nick waited for Jess to look up to say anything. Their exchanged heys were tense.

"What are you looking up?" He pointed to the computer, a Wikipedia page open but scrolled down past the subject. Jess scrolled up. "Robert Redford." She said. "Schmidt and I couldn't remember if he was dead or alive." She moved the cursor along the webpage as though she was interested in what the content was. "Turns out he remarried a couple of years ago. Respect."

Jess's finger-tapping on the leather couch filled the quiet between them. She inhaled, he inhaled. Nick's "Okay what is the deal here?" He'd had enough and that Tuesday, they needed to talk about it. Air out cramped words.

Jess reacted immediately. She hung her head between her legs, groaning. "Oh my god, I don't know." She shook her head, visibly annoyed. "I got really spooked."

"By Shane?"

Jess shrugged. "Yeah. Shane, you, all of it. I'm like a dog in a thunderstorm, man." Groaning again, Jess slumped over her own legs. Her breathing was staggered. She lifted her head. "Head rush." Nick watched her stand up, a look of disorientation passing across her face. "Okay, double head rush." She put her hands on her hips. "Whoa."

"Okay, okay." Nick sighed, not wanting to spiral out of the pending conversation. His hand found its steadying place on the small of her back. She wriggled free.

"See, god, that! _That_." She grabbed his hand, lifting it up to him as if to introduce him to his own limb, and dropped it. "I mean, you're always touching my back or my leg and it's like...agh."

Confused, Nick asked for a further explanation. Jess kept closing her eyes and wiping her forehead, not speaking. "I won't touch you anymore, alright? I don't even think about it when I do it. It just happens." Nick knew how he sounded. He watched Jess react to his honesty, a strange pained look on her face. She pressed her thumb against her eyebrow.

"I'm so stressed out." She explained. Nick could glean that. And then suddenly, it just seemed so ridiculous. Jess's behaviour indicated some sort of physical illness. "I'm sorry. But I am." Jess folded at the waist, bent over, her hands on her hips. "I feel like... I have no clue what I am supposed to do, you know?"

Nick stayed silent to encourage her monologue.

"I mean seriously, I feel like I am being suffocated by these feelings." Jess continued padding her body in various ways to decompress. She told him that she felt a total lack of control, a complete lack of anything weighting her to the ground. Seeing Shane, she told him, felt like she had just melted. Pooled down on the bar floor, _Secret World of Alex Mack _style. Jess ended her exasperated confession with wet eyes, looking up at him. "I feel like this situation completely got away from me."

Solidarity hit Nick. He had fallen in love with her, and she had fallen in love with him, and neither knew how to translate that into concrete words. "I'm an adult, you know?" She continued, still looking at him, unabashed longing across her face. Then she gagged. "It's just a big mess of confusion, all stewing together in this cauldron that is my body." Jess rubbed her belly. "I have literally been talking for fifteen minutes without your interjection."

"I don't know, Jess." The truth was that he didn't know. Jess was confused, overwhelmed, delivering her message with characteristic theatrics.

"Well can you at least say something?" The despair in her voice when she asked him made his palms sweat. This was it. Jess's weariness came out in a sigh. "Do you have feelings for me?"

Nick promised: "Yes."

"Like real feelings?"

"Yes."

"What about Shane?"

If ever sincerity could manifest as a tone of voice, this was the time. Nick spoke, his sentiment so thoroughly truthful and important. "I'm sorry." And then: "She's not you, Jess."

Glassy eyed, she curled into him, wrapping her arms around his neck. Her grip was tight. Her face tucked into the crook of his neck, Jess spoke. He could feel her lips moving on his neck with the words she spoke. She got out a quiet "Okay, good" before her words turned to kisses, moving up his jaw, reaching his lips.

**_Fin._**

_Encouraging reviews for once!_


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